The Terms of Service for the newCrysis 3 open beta includes language about banning players for not reporting bugs, recalling the recently quelled controversy over the SimCity beta ToS threating a mab from all EA games for failure to report bugs. This new End-User License Agreement issue apparently has the same resolution as the previous one, as games.on.net notes a tweet explaining: "We did - it was baked into the Beta before we realized it had the 'Bug Ban' clause. We aren't enforcing that." They also link a follow-up tweet saying: "We'll be releasing a blog post about that soon, but for now rest assured we aren't banning players for finding bugs." So we now know why EULAs and ToSes are so lengthy: Even the people making the games can't be bothered to read the crap they let their lawyers stuff into them.

Beamer wrote on Jan 30, 2013, 16:55:They were pretty upfront that they were going to abuse that, though.

No they weren't. They played the same "Oh, that's just in there as broad language. We'll never do that," card. It took them a grand total of a few weeks to start banning people from their games.

And even so, this is a company that's already abused their ToS, why would you trust anything they put in their ToS? They've already banned people from all their games for bullshit reasons.

Then backed away from, went back to, backed away from, went back to, and makes you wonder if anyone at EA has a clue what anyone else over there is doing.

They don't, because their management is absolutely terrible. Is that supposed to make me feel better?

Plus, I'm saying don't freak out and not play a game. But I am saying give them hell for it and make a stink and make them change it.

I wouldn't participate in a beta from a company that pulls this kind of horseshit, but to each their own.

If I remember, they announced it as policy, then said it was a mistake, then did it, then said it was a bug and it wasn't policy any longer, then did it again... but they still announced it as policy first. It wasn't something sneaky - they told everyone they'd do it. It's what they did after that was sneaky.

That makes no sense whatsoever. They always said that that language in their ToS was just in there for shits and giggles, and it would never be enforced. Then they enforced it, and tried to pretend it wasn't them being assholes, but that it was just a bug because, gee willickers, it's so damn hard to keep all these accounts apart! Said "bug" took a year to fix.

You have to basically be Mahatma Gandhi to still believe their "Oh, we won't abuse it" spiel. Again, they have already abused it even though they said they wouldn't.

I don't think I'm defending EA here. At all.

I didn't really mean you by that. I was more referring to the guy who keeps trying to see how far he can ram his tongue up EA's asshole while posting the same fact-ignoring bullshit in every single thread. And there's a few more like him.